OTTAWA — Even as Foreign Minister Stéphane Dion called a recently announced nuclear disarmament negotiation “more symbolic than real” Tuesday, experts were urging Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to step up and make Canada a bigger part of the movement to ban nuclear weapons — just like his father did during the Cold War.

Last week, 123 countries voted in a UN committee to begin negotiations on a nuclear disarmament treaty next year. Canada was among more than 30 countries that voted against, including major nuclear powers and most members of NATO. The vote will be confirmed at the general assembly in December, where Canada could, but isn’t likely to, change its vote.

The Rideau Institute’s Peggy Mason, Canada’s ambassador for disarmament from 1989 to 1994, said Tuesday the “no” vote was a “shocker.” Canada should have abstained and signalled an intent to participate in negotiations, she said. The way it voted “is not in keeping with a country that is seeking election to the UN Security Council in 2021,” she added.

Stephen Shaver/AFPA photo taken on Nov. 3, 1999, shows one of China's first nuclear missles, the Dong Feng 1, at the Military Museum in Beijing.

Paul Meyer, another Canadian ambassador for disarmament from 2003 to 2007 and currently a fellow at Simon Fraser University, agreed an abstention would have been better than a “no.”

“As a good international citizen, it’s important to recognize that when the General Assembly has established a process, that you should participate in a constructive fashion, and obviously use the process to continue to advocate for your preferred positions,” Meyer said. “To turn your back on the whole thing is not productive.”

Still, Dion told the National Post Tuesday he doesn’t think change will happen if non-nuclear states agree “between themselves,” though it’s “too hypothetical for now” to say whether Canada will play a role within or alongside negotiations.

“Since the nuclear countries are not in the process … it will be more symbolic than real,” he said. Asked whether he thinks nuclear powers will ever acquiesce to a treaty, he said, “not in the foreseeable future, but step by step, we’ll go there.”

Meyer rebutted there’s “probably no multilateral security agreement in existence” that had all states participating from day one, including the UN’s nuclear non-proliferation treaty.

Veteran politician and diplomat Douglas Roche, who headed the UN’s disarmament committee in 1988, recalled that a UN landmine convention initiated by the “Ottawa process” 20 years ago was first “blocked completely by the major landmine possessors.” But Canada was “undeterred” and went ahead anyway.

Now, usage of landmines is stigmatized and even states who aren’t parties to the convention generally abide by it. That “stigmatization” is what’s needed on the nuclear weapons front, he said.

In the modern background are escalating tensions between the U.S., its NATO allies and Russia. Dion said tension between the U.S. and Russia “must be addressed,” and in holding dialogue with Russia, Canada is now “much more aligned with our allies than before.”

On Oct. 17, the U.S. sent a “non paper” on nuclear deterrence to its NATO allies and, in an unclassified letter obtained by the National Post, asked them to vote “no” on negotiations and “avoid introducing any doubt” regarding allies’ commitment to deterrence and defence — with nuclear weapons at their heart.

The Netherlands, which hosts a launching base for U.S. tactical nukes, was the only NATO member to abstain from the vote, after a parliamentary resolution calling for a “yes.” Even the abstention took “courage,” Mason said.

Meyer noted if the U.S. wasn’t worried about the results of a negotiation it wouldn’t be “so energized” in trying to get its allies to oppose it — and it’s “regrettable” if allies “capitulate” only to align themselves with the States.

Even today, all nine nuclear states are engaged in modernization programs, with the U.S. dwarfing the others. The International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons estimates annual global spending at $120 billion.

We’re on a conveyor belt hurtling backwards

The rest of the world has been taking “tiny steps forward,” Mason said, “while we’re on a conveyor belt hurtling backwards, towards ever more lethal nuclear weapons.”

Canada had publicly lauded a different vote last week, passed by 177 countries, to have a group recommend elements of an eventual treaty banning the production of fissile materials, which are used to make nuclear weapons. Dion said he thinks the treaty is the “most reachable” step towards disarmament.

But Mason said it’s similar to past resolutions, including one she oversaw in her fifth year as Canada’s ambassador for disarmament, in 1994. Past efforts have languished, she said, and a real, first-time negotiation of a nuclear ban — the subject of the first vote — is a surer sign of progress.

Ray Acheson, a Canadian with the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom in New York, said Canada should lean on its history and tradition of being a leader on disarmament issues.

The treaty is “a tool that will help break the logjam and the deadlock that we’ve seen for more than two decades now,” she said. “We still have an obligation as a country that believes in international peace, security and justice that we stand up when (countries) are doing things that are not in humanity’s interest.”

Saying rising tensions and threats only make responsible leadership more crucial, Roche remembered then-prime minister Pierre Trudeau urging Washington and Moscow to come to a resolution on nuclear weapons in the mid-’80s, during the Cold War.

The elder Trudeau famously said, then: “Political leaders will decide whether or not a nuclear war actually takes place, yet politicians act as if peace is too complicated for them.”

For all the divisions among world powers, one concern unites Russia and the U.S., India and Pakistan, North Korea and Israel at the United Nations: Keeping their nuclear weapons.

Those nuclear-armed states and the three others — China, France and the U.K. — are working to head off a resolution calling for a global conference to establish a binding “legal process” to ban the manufacture, possession, stockpiling and use of the weapons. They’re bucking a popular cause backed by 50 nations, from Ireland to Brazil, which say the measure could win as many as 120 votes in the 193-member General Assembly.

While the resolution to be voted on Thursday would be non-binding, opposing its call for a nuclear-free world is awkward for world leaders, and none more so than U.S. President Barack Obama. He’s preparing to leave office seven years after he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in large part for what the award panel called his “vision of, and work for, a world without nuclear weapons.”

The U.S. plans to vote “no” on the resolution and would refuse to participate in the negotiations over a nuclear ban if it passes, Robert Wood, the U.S. special representative to the UN’s Geneva-based Conference on Disarmament, said Oct. 14.

“How can a state that relies on nuclear weapons for its security possibly join a negotiation meant to stigmatize and eliminate them,” Wood said in an address at the U.N. Because nuclear weapons play a role in maintaining peace and stability in some parts of the world, a “ban treaty runs the risk of undermining regional security,” he said.

Echoing that view, Matthew Rowland, the U.K.’s representative to the disarmament conference, said the same day that his country’s nuclear deterrence must be maintained “for the foreseeable future” because of the “risk that states might use their nuclear capability to threaten us, try to constrain our decision-making in a crisis or sponsor nuclear terrorism.”

After international efforts to ban the use of biological and chemical weapons, land mines and cluster bombs, arms control advocates say it’s time to deal with nuclear bombs as the remaining weapons of mass destruction that aren’t prohibited. Sponsors of the resolution include Austria, Mexico, Nigeria and South Africa.

“Given the tremendous humanitarian consequences of any nuclear explosion, we have to take action,” Thomas Hajnoczi, Austria’s ambassador to the U.N. in Geneva, said in an interview. “Nuclear weapons states always say it’s too early for such a treaty but we think time is right to create legal norms to ban weapons of mass destruction.”

The initiative comes 70 years after a resolution was adopted in 1946 establishing a commission to make proposals for “the elimination from national armaments of atomic weapons and of all other major weapons adaptable to mass destruction.” It also comes a year after the formal adoption of the deal to curb Iran’s nuclear program that was negotiated by some of the same nations opposing the new resolution.

Raveendran / AFP / Getty ImagesAn Agni-IV missile is displayed during the Republic Day parade in New Delhi. India tested on April 19, 2012 a new long-range missile, the Agni V, capable of delivering a one-tonne nuclear warhead

In 2011, Obama negotiated a nuclear treaty with Russia requiring each country to reduce its arsenal to 1,550 operational warheads, and that accord remains intact. But amid worsening relations between the Cold War rivals, the Pentagon plans to spend $1 trillion over the next 30 years to modernize its air-land-sea triad of nuclear weapons.

And Russian President Vladimir Putin has suspended a nuclear nonproliferation treaty and vowed to develop new arms systems to neutralize the U.S.’s missile defense shield, which he sees as a breach of the nuclear balance.

Faced with a more assertive China in the South China Sea and the rapid advances of North Korea’s nuclear weapons program, the U.S. is lobbying NATO allies such as the Netherlands to vote against the resolution, according to European diplomats.

Nuclear weapons states always say it’s too early for such a treaty but we think time is right

“Successful nuclear reductions will require participation from all relevant parties, proven verification measures, and security conditions conducive to cooperation,” Mark Toner, a State Department spokesman, said. “We lack all three factors at this time.”

Supporters of the resolution cite the success of efforts to ban land mines. The Ottawa Convention, which prohibited their manufacture and use, was drafted in 1997 and more than 160 countries have ratified it.

While Russia, China and the U.S. refused to sign it, the Obama administration announced in 2014 that it planned to comply with the ban outside the Korean Peninsula, and to destroy its stockpile there if it wasn’t needed for the defense of South Korea.

“The resolution can help to further delegitimize nuclear weapons,” said Susie Snyder, a nuclear disarmament program manager at PAX, an advocacy group. “It will pass. The question is how many will vote yes and will participate in the conference.”
With files from Ilya Arkhipov

TEHRAN — Iran’s foreign minister on Tuesday extolled the country’s ability to bring its nuclear program back on track as limits on the landmark 15-year accord between Tehran and world powers ease in the coming years.

Mohammad Javad Zarif said a document, submitted by Iran to the International Atomic Energy Agency and outlining plans to expand Iran’s uranium enrichment program, is a “matter of pride.”

He said it was created by Iran’s “negotiators and industry experts” and that even foreign media have noted Iran is likely to strive for restoring its full enrichment after 10 years.

Zarif’s remarks, carried by the semi-official Fars news agency, followed revelations the day before of the confidential document — an add-on agreement to the nuclear deal with world powers — that Iran gave the IAEA.

Jeremy Lempin / AFP / Getty ImagesIranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif during a meeting with French President Francois Hollande in Paris on June 22.

The document, obtained by The Associated Press in Vienna, outlines Tehran’s plans to expand its uranium enrichment program after the first 10 years of the nuclear deal.

It’s the only text linked to last year’s deal between Iran and six world powers — the United States, Britain, France, Russia, China plus Germany — that has not been made public, although U.S. officials say members of Congress who expressed interest were briefed on its substance.

Zarif said the addendum to the nuclear deal will soon be made public, but he did not elaborate.

“God willing, when the complete text of the document is published, it will be clear where we will stand in 15 years,” he said.

The document was given to the AP by a diplomat whose work has focused on Iran’s nuclear program for more than a decade, and its authenticity was confirmed by another diplomat who possesses the same document. Both spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to share or discuss the document.

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It says that as of January 2027 — a date which will mark 11 years after the implementation early this year of the deal, reached last July between Tehran and world powers — Iran will start replacing its mainstay centrifuges with thousands of advanced machines.

Centrifuges churn out uranium to levels that can range from use as reactor fuel and for medical and research purposes to much higher levels for the core of a nuclear warhead. From year 11 to 13, says the document, Iran will install centrifuges up to five times as efficient as the 5,060 machines it is now restricted to using.

Associated Press Writer George Jahn contributed to this report from Vienna.

SEOUL, Korea, Republic Of — North Korean leader Kim Jong Un ordered his military to be ready to launch nuclear strikes at any time, state media reported Friday, an escalation in rhetoric targeting Seoul and Washington that may not reflect the country’s actual nuclear capacity.

The threats are part of the authoritarian government’s ramped-up propaganda push to signal strength at home and abroad in the face of what it portrays as an effort by South Korea and the United States to overthrow its leadership.

In North Korea’s first official response to the U.N.’s recent adoption of harsh sanctions over its recent nuclear test and long-range rocket launch, the North also warned Friday it will bolster its nuclear arsenal and make unspecified “strong and merciless physical” measures. A government statement called the U.N. sanctions the “most heinous international criminal act” aimed at isolating and stifling the country.

“The only way for defending the sovereignty of our nation and its right to existence under the present extreme situation is to bolster up nuclear force both in quality and quantity,” the North’s official Korean Central News Agency said, paraphrasing Kim. It said Kim stressed “the need to get the nuclear warheads deployed for national defence always on standby so as to be fired any moment.”

North Korea has threatened nuclear war in the past, but it is unclear just how advanced the country’s nuclear program really is. It is thought to have a handful of crude atomic bombs, but there is considerable outside debate about the state of its arsenal.

Most experts say it’s highly unlikely that North Korea currently has a reliable intercontinental ballistic missile capable of reaching U.S. shores, let alone the ability to arm it with a miniaturized nuclear warhead. But North Korea can probably place nuclear warheads on its shorter-range Scuds and its 1,300-kilometre-range Rodong missiles, which can strike targets in South Korea and Japan, said Lee Choon Geun, an analyst from South Korea’s state-funded Science and Technology Policy Institute. Other analysts, however, question this.

Kim issued the nuclear threat while guiding the test-firing of a new large-calibre multiple launch rocket system, in a likely reference to six short-range projectiles that Seoul says North Korea fired on Thursday.

South Korea’s Defence Ministry said the projectiles, fired from the eastern coastal town of Wonsan, flew about 100 to 150 kilometres and landed in the sea. Ministry officials said they couldn’t confirm whether they were fired by the weapons system referred to by the North Korean news agency. The report did not say when the test-firing occurred.

Thursday’s firings were seen as a “low-level” response to the U.N. sanctions, with North Korea unlikely to launch any major provocation until its landmark ruling Workers’ Party convention in May, according to Yang Moo-jin, a professor at the University of North Korean Studies in Seoul.

Ahn Young-joon / Associated PressSouth Korean army K-1 tanks move during the annual exercise in Yeoncheon, near the border with North Korea.

The U.N. Security Council sanctions, the toughest of their kind in two decades, include mandatory inspections of cargo leaving and entering North Korea by land, sea or air; a ban on all sales or transfers of small arms and light weapons to the North; and the expulsion of North Korean diplomats who engage in “illicit activities.”

The North Korean statement described the sanctions as “nothing new” and “not that surprising.” Citizens of the capital, Pyongyang, interviewed by The Associated Press on Thursday said they believe their country can fight off any sanctions, in a reflection of official propaganda.

Kim Hong-Ji / Getty ImagesThe South Korea's Defence Ministry's director general, Major General Jang Kyung-soo, shakes hands with US Forces Korea's Major General Robert Hedelund.

Recent commercial satellite imagery indicates new activity, possibly preparations for a rocket engine test, at a launch site where North Korea fired a long-range rocket on Feb. 6, according to an analysis by the North Korea-focused 38 North website.

In another development that will anger North Korea, South Korean and U.S. officials began formal talks Friday on deploying a sophisticated U.S. missile defence system in South Korea.

The deployment of the Terminal High-Altitude Area Defence, or THAAD, is opposed by North Korea, China and Russia. Opponents say the system could help U.S. radar spot missiles in other countries as well.

The U.S. and South Korea are to kick off large war games next week that North Korea says are preparations for an invasion. South Korea is also taking a much harder line meant to squeeze North Korea’s government.

South Korean President Park Geun-hye said Thursday she will co-operate with the international community in trying to end North Korean “tyranny that suppresses the freedom and human rights” of its own people. She recently warned of North Korea’s future collapse, and South Korea’s National Assembly passed a human rights bill that criticizes the North Korean government’s abysmal treatment of its citizens.

In January, North Korea conducted its fourth nuclear test, which it claimed was a hydrogen bomb. Last month, it put a satellite into orbit with a long-range rocket that the United Nations and others saw as a cover for a test of banned ballistic missile technology.

TEHRAN, Iran — Iran’s parliament voted Tuesday to support implementing a landmark nuclear deal struck with world powers despite hard-line attempts to derail the bill, suggesting the historic accord will be carried out.

The bill will be reviewed by Iran’s 12-member Guardian Council, a group of senior clerics who could return it to lawmakers for further discussion. However, Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who has the final say on key policies, has said it is up to the 290-seat parliament to approve or reject the deal.

Signalling the nuclear deal’s likely success, a spokesman for moderate President Hassan Rouhani’s administration welcomed the parliament’s vote and called it a “historic decision.”

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“Members of parliament made a well-considered decision today showing they have a good understanding of the country’s situation,” Mohammad Bagher Nobakht said. “We hope to see acceleration in progress and development of the country from now on.”

The European Union’s foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini, who helped facilitate the nuclear talks, also praised the vote as “good news” in a message on Twitter.

In the parliamentary session carried live by state radio, 161 lawmakers voted for implementing the nuclear deal, while 59 voted against it and 13 abstained. Another 17 did not vote at all, while 40 lawmakers did not attend the session.

A preliminary parliamentary vote Sunday saw 139 lawmakers out of the 253 present support the outline of the bill. But despite getting more support Tuesday, hard-liners still tried to disrupt the parliament’s session, shouting that Khamenei himself did not support the bill while trying to raise numerous proposals on its details.

“This decision has no link to the leader!” shouted Mahdi Kouchakzadeh, a hard-line lawmaker who rushed toward the front of parliament to yell at speaker Ali Larijani. “It is a decision by Larijani and we oppose it!”

The case is over. The deal should be implemented

The semi-official Fars news agency reported that Ali Aghar Zarei, another hard-line lawmaker, broke down weeping after the vote. Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif, who led Iran’s nuclear negotiation team, left the session when it grew tense, the state-run IRNA news agency said.

The bill grants responsibility for implementing the deal to Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, the top security body of the country, which Rouhani heads. It allows Iran to withdraw from the agreement if world powers do not lift sanctions, impose new sanctions or restore previous ones.

“The government is obligated to stop its voluntary co-operation if the other side fails to remain committed,” the bill says.

The bill also requires the Iranian government to work toward the nuclear disarmament of Israel, which has the region’s sole, if undeclared, nuclear arsenal. The bill also says the government should take “necessary measures” to prevent the U.S. and the West from penetrating the country through the deal, a worry mentioned by Khamenei himself in recent weeks.

Hard-liners had hoped to stall the deal in order to weaken Rouhani’s moderate administration ahead of February’s parliamentary elections. But many in Iran applauded the final nuclear deal, struck July 14 in Vienna, as it would lift crippling economic sanctions in exchange for limits on the nuclear program.

The U.N. Security Council previously approved the deal on July 20 and the U.S. Congress blocked efforts by Republicans to derail the accord in September.
That left Iran to approve the deal, which came after nearly two years of negotiations between it and the United States, Britain, France, Russia, China and Germany.

It was not immediately clear Tuesday when the Guardian Council would issue its own decision. However, it usually approves bills in a short span after a decision by parliament. While Khamenei himself has neither supported nor rejected the deal in public, he frequently praised Iran’s negotiators during the talks.

Saeed Leilaz, a Tehran-based political analyst, told The Associated Press that he believed the Guardian Council would approve the bill. He dismissed the hard-liner anger as a “domestic manoeuvr” ahead of the February election.

“The entire system has been supporting the deal,” Leilaz said. “The case is over. The deal should be implemented.”

The framework concluded last week on Iran’s nuclear program was doomed to disagreement. Even the “fact sheets” issued by the United States, France and Iran — all parties to the talks — didn’t agree on the facts.

Israel has made clear its grave concerns about the framework’s fundamental elements and omissions. The vast nuclear infrastructure to be left in Iran will give it an unacceptably short breakout time to building a bomb. Iran’s long-range ballistic missile program — a threat to Israel as well as the rest of the Middle East, Europe and the United States — is untouched. The sanctions on Iran will be lifted (quickly, according to the Iranians; gradually, according to the United States), while restrictions imposed on the Islamic republic’s nuclear program will expire in about a decade, regardless of Iran’s campaign of murderous aggression in Lebanon, Syria, Yemen and elsewhere across the Middle East; its arming, funding, training and dispatching of terrorists around the world; and its threats and violent efforts to destroy Israel, the region’s only democracy.

The track record of inspections and intelligence makes the framework’s outsize reliance on them both misguided and dangerous.

To justify the risks inherent to the framework, its supporters have posited three main arguments: that the only alternative is war; that Iranian violations will be deterred or detected because of “unprecedented verification”; and that, in the event of violations, sanctions will be snapped back into place. These arguments have one important feature in common: They’re all wrong.
The claim that the only alternative to the framework is war is false. It both obscures the failure to attain better terms from Iran and stifles honest and open debate by suggesting that if you don’t agree, you must be a warmonger. It also feeds and reflects the calumny that Israel in particular is agitating for war.

AFP / DIGITALGLOBEA satellite image of the Iranian nuclear facility of Fordow near the holy Shiite city of Qom.

As Israel’s minister of defence, as a former Israel Defence Forces chief of general staff and as a combat veteran forced to bury some of my closest friends, I know too well the costs of war. I also know that Israelis are likely to pay the highest price if force is used — by anyone — against Iran’s nuclear program. No country, therefore, has a greater interest in seeing the Iranian nuclear question resolved peacefully than Israel. Our opposition to a deal based on the framework is not because we seek war, but because the terms of the framework — which will leave an unreformed Iran stronger, richer and with a clear path to a bomb — make war more likely.

It is fantasy to think the sanctions can be restored and become effective in the exceedingly short breakout time provided by the terms of the framework.

The framework is supposed to prevent or detect Iranian denials and deception about their nuclear program by means of inspections and intelligence. Unfortunately, the track record of inspections and intelligence makes the framework’s outsize reliance on them both misguided and dangerous.
In many ways, the Iranian nuclear crisis began and intensified after two massive intelligence failures. Neither Israeli nor other leading Western intelligence agencies knew about Iran’s underground enrichment facilities at Natanz and Fordow until it was too late. As good as our intelligence services are, they simply cannot guarantee that they will detect Iranian violations at all, let alone in time to stop a dash for a bomb.

Twenty years ago, inspectors were supposed to keep the world safe from a North Korean nuclear bomb. Today, North Korea is a nuclear weapons state, and Iran isn’t complying with its existing obligations to come clean about its suspected efforts to design nuclear warheads. There is no reason to believe that Iran will start cooperating tomorrow, but the deal all but guarantees that it will nonetheless have the nuclear infrastructure it would need to produce a nuclear arsenal. Intelligence and inspections are simply no substitute for dismantling the parts of Iran’s program that can be used to produce atomic bombs.

Twenty years ago, inspectors were supposed to keep the world safe from a North Korean nuclear bomb. Today, North Korea is a nuclear weapons state

Finally, there are the sanctions that brought Iran to the negotiating table in the first place. These took years to put in place and even longer to become effective. Once lifted, they cannot be snapped back after future Iranian violations. It is fantasy to think the sanctions can be restored and become effective in the exceedingly short breakout time provided by the terms of the framework.

Though we have a serious policy disagreement with the United States regarding the framework and its implications, I am nevertheless confident that the friendship and alliance we share will not only weather this difference of views but also emerge even stronger from it. This is precisely what has happened in the past. Israelis know that the United States is Israel’s greatest friend and strategic ally. No disagreement, not even about this critical issue, can diminish our enduring, profound gratitude to the president and his administration, Congress and the American people for all the United States has done to enhance the security of the Jewish state.

The choice is not between this bad deal and war. The alternative is a better deal that significantly rolls back Iran’s nuclear infrastructure and links the lifting of restrictions on its nuclear program to an end of Iran’s aggression in the region, its terrorism across the globe and its threats to annihilate Israel. This alternative requires neither war nor putting our faith in tools that have already failed us.

LAUSANNE, Switzerland — Iran and six world powers have agreed on the outlines of an understanding to limit Iran’s nuclear programs, negotiators indicated Thursday, as both sides prepared for announcements.

European Union foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini tweeted that she would meet the press with Zarif after a final meeting of the seven nations in the nuclear talks. She wrote: “Good news.”

The officials spoke following weeklong talks that have been twice extended past the March 31 deadline in an effort to formulate both a general statement of what has been accomplished and documents describing what needs to be done to meet a June 30 deadline for a final accord.

Big day: #EU, P5+1, and #Iran now have parameters to resolve major issues on nuclear program. Back to work soon on a final deal.

Mogherini and Zarif were to read out the same statement in English and Farsi. Zarif and U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry were then expected to brief reporters separately.

The U.S. and five other countries hope to curb Iran’s nuclear technologies that could be used to make weapons. Tehran denies such ambitions but is negotiating because it wants a lifting of economic sanctions imposed over its nuclear program.

BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI/AFP/Getty ImagesThe Head of the Iranian Atomic Energy Organization Ali Akbar Salehi (left) talks with Hossein Fereydoon, special assistant to the Iranian president, while walking through a garden at the Beau Rivage Palace Hotel during an extended round of talks April 2, 2015 in Lausanne, Switzerland.

Pressured by congressional critics in the U.S. who threaten to impose new sanctions over what they say is a bad emerging deal, the Obama administration is demanding significant public disclosure of agreements and understandings reached at the current round. Iran wants a minimum made public at this point, describing previous two-stage deals as detrimental to their interests, officials say.

The Iranians want any results from talks in the Swiss city of Lausanne described less as a deal and more of an informal understanding.

The talks resumed Thursday after a flurry of overnight sessions between Kerry and Zarif, and other meetings involving the six powers.

Iran also wants to get rid of sanctions that have stifled its economy. The U.S. and its partners want detailed documents on the steps Iran must take by the end of June on its nuclear program.

One problem, said Zarif, has been differing voices among the other side at the table — the United States, Russia, China, Britain, France and Germany — making it difficult for them “to reach a co-ordination.”

AP Photo/Brendan Smialowski, PoolU.S. Secretary of State John Kerry looks over papers in a courtyard, at the Beau Rivage Palace Hotel.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, who left Lausanne Tuesday, said the two sides were close, the Interfax news agency reported. There are “only a few steps left to take or, in some cases, even-half steps, and some things have already been agreed upon,” he said.

The talks — the latest in more than a decade of diplomatic efforts to curb Iran’s nuclear prowess — hit the weeklong mark on Thursday, shortly before the State Department announced they would go into double overtime from the March 31 deadline for a political framework.

As the sides bore down on efforts to get a deal, German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier cancelled a planned visit to Lithuania, Estonia and Latvia. French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius was also back, less than a day after leaving the city.

By blowing through self-imposed deadlines, President Barack Obama risks further antagonizing lawmakers in both parties who are poised to take their own action to upend a deal if they determine the administration has been too conciliatory.

The initial response to the extensions from Republicans suggested they already reached that conclusion.

“It is clear, the negotiations are not going well,” Sens. John McCain of Arizona and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina said in a statement. “At every step, the Iranians appear intent on retaining the capacity to achieve a nuclear weapon.”

LAUSANNE, Switzerland — The United States and Iran reported significant progress Saturday toward a nuclear agreement, with the Iranian president declaring a deal within reach. America’s top diplomat was more reserved, leaving open whether world powers and Tehran would meet a March 31 deadline.

Speaking after a week of nuclear negotiations in Switzerland, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry challenged Iran to make “fundamental decisions” that prove to the world it has no interest in atomic weapons. Amid conflicting statement by officials about how close the sides were, Kerry said, “We have an opportunity to try to get this right.”

In Tehran, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani was more optimistic. “Achieving a deal is possible,” he said. “There is nothing that can’t be resolved.”

Achieving a deal is possible. There is nothing that can’t be resolved

Other negotiators offered both positive and negative assessments. Top Russian negotiator Sergey Ryabkov and Iran’s atomic energy chief Ali Akbar Salehi said in recent days that technical work was nearly done. But French officials said the opposite, declaring the sides far from any agreement.

Kerry was departing later Saturday to meet with European allies in London, before returning to Washington, in part to ensure unity. Kerry said the U.S. and its five negotiating partners — Britain, China, France, Germany and Russia — are “united in our goal, our approach, our resolve and our determination.”

But France, which raised last minute objections to an interim agreement reached with Iran in 2013, could threaten a deal again. It is particularly opposed to providing Iran with quick relief from international sanctions and wants a longer timeframe for restrictions on Iran’s nuclear activity.

On Twitter Friday, France’s ambassador to the U.S. called talk about needing a deal by March 31 a “bad tactic” that is “counterproductive and dangerous.” Gerard Araud called it an “artificial deadline” and said negotiators should focus instead on the next phase — reaching a complete agreement by the end of June.

Kerry said the U.S. wasn’t rushing into a pact, stressing that the latest stab at a diplomatic settlement with Iran has gone on for 2 1/2 years. “We don’t want just any deal,” he said. “If we had, we could have announced something a long time ago.”

But, he added, decisions “don’t get any easier as time goes by.”

“It’s time to make hard decisions,” Kerry said. “We want the right deal that would make the world, including the United States and our closest allies and partners, safer and more secure. And that is our test.”

Washington has yet to say what it will do if talks miss the March deadline, but the stakes are high. The Obama administration has warned that a diplomatic failure could lead to an ever tougher dilemma: Whether to launch a military attack on Iran or allow it to reach nuclear weapons capacity.

A more immediate challenge may be intervention from Congress. If American lawmakers pass new economic sanctions on Iran, the Islamic Republic could respond by busting through the interim limits on its nuclear program it agreed to 16 months ago. Thus far, it has stuck to that agreement.

In the path towards a comprehensive agreement over Iran’s nuclear program, the devil will certainly be in the details.

Though there’s been much speculation that the differences have been bridged between the P5+1, the group of major powers led by the United States and Iran, in the race to meet the March 31 deadline for a deal, the truism applies that those who know aren’t saying, and those who are saying don’t know.

Yet while the stated purpose of the negotiations is to thwart the theocratic regime’s race to acquire nuclear weapons, behind the headlines a pyrrhic victory seems to be emerging that would leave Iran on the threshold of becoming a nuclear state.

The longstanding goal of the international community has always been to eliminate Iran’s capability to produce nuclear weapons, and specifically to verify, dismantle and destroy Iran’s nuclear program. Now, however, a much less ambitious goal has seen the negotiators accede to maximalist Iranian demands that would merely extend the breakout time for Iran to produce a nuclear bomb. A deal with a so-called “sunset clause” would only restrict Iran’s enrichment activities for a short while, perhaps by just 10-15 years. The deal would also likely see Iran allowed to keep at least 6,500 centrifuges spinning, along with its retention of advanced fissile materials and an end to “intrusive” inspections.

Ultimately, there would be formal acceptance of Iran as a nuclear power under the Non-Proliferation Treaty. Iran would be allowed to have an unrestricted industrial-scale uranium enrichment program that experts believe couldn’t be rolled back. The “phased-in” deal would see a gradual elimination of the sanctions that have been vital in bringing Iran to the table, together with a gradual lifting of restrictions on its uranium enrichment program, including even at weapons-grade levels, allowing it to accelerate and weaponize its program in the latter years of the agreement — and rapidly produce nuclear arms thereafter.

These are just the latest one-sided concessions. According to the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies (FDD), a think tank that promotes a robust sanctions regime, the so-called Interim Deal reached in Geneva in January 2014 saw the world powers agree that Iran could continue to enrich uranium and keep it on Iranian soil, in flagrant contravention of a series of UN resolutions. Previous demands that the Fordow uranium-enrichment facility be shuttered along with the Arak heavy-water reactor (not needed to produce nuclear energy, but integral to producing nuclear weapons) have been relinquished. Moreover, Iran was allowed to continue its research and development efforts into advanced centrifuges and its ballistic missile program, the ultimate delivery mechanism of a nuclear weapon. These concessions were rightly viewed as rewards for Iranian belligerence, stonewalling, and intransigence.

The sanctions imposed by the international community on Iran’s nuclear, petroleum, financial and military sectors were designed to bring Iran into compliance with international law. However, Iran was granted premature and ill-advised relief from these sanctions, which spurred its economy, reduced its inflation and stabilized its currency. Sanctions had previously prevented billions of dollars from bolstering the Iranian regime, but this leverage was largely given away without reciprocity.

Despite Iranian contentions that its activities are for peaceful purposes, its efforts have not been transparent. Its nuclear program is largely underground, suggestive of the military dimensions of the program, and International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) inspectors are denied entry into sensitive sites. The agency says it is unable to conclude “that all nuclear material in Iran is for peaceful purposes.”

Related

The Iranian facility at Parchin, long suspected of housing nuclear weapons research, was the site of a suspicious massive explosion last fall. Meanwhile, opposition groups in Iran recently unveiled the existence of a secret nuclear site called Lavizan-3. The site is said to have advanced centrifuge machines and is located on a military base, with underground labs connected by a tunnel.

Though Iran is a signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, it hasn’t been compliant. It has amassed stockpiles of plutonium and enough 5%-enriched uranium to produce several bombs, some of which can be enriched to the 20% level. Yet according to the FDD, some 17 countries produce nuclear energy without the need for plutonium or uranium.

Based on Iran’s track record of duplicity, bellicosity, and delay, Canada rightly continues to enforce its sanctions through the Special Economic Measures Act, along with listing Iran as a state sponsor of terror. Iranian President Rouhani has been characterized in the media as a “moderate,” yet Rouhani’s own statements betray his hardline stance on the subject of nuclear weapons. In Rouhani’s 2011 memoir describing his time as Iran’s chief nuclear negotiator, he writes: “While we were talking to the Europeans in Tehran, we were installing equipment in Isfahan … By creating a calm environment, we were able to complete the work in Isfahan.” These are Iran’s true nuclear intentions and this helps to explain why Canada has expressed “deep skepticism” over Iran’s intentions.

Indeed, Iran’s role as the leading state sponsor of terrorism, its serial human rights abuses, incitement to genocide, and attempts to destabilize the region, do little to inspire confidence; neither do its repeated threats to annihilate Israel, nor its calls for the demise of the West. As Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told American journalist Charlie Rose, “They’re not developing those ICBMs (ballistic missiles) for us. They can reach us with what they have. It’s for you.”

Iran is the world’s most dangerous regime operating in the world’s most volatile region

With Shia Iran on the cusp of developing nuclear weapons capability, Sunni Arab countries such as Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States, though they have no diplomatic relations with Israel, have engaged in high-level meetings with it with the aim of forming a regional alliance against Iran’s nuclear ambitions. Should Iran succeed nonetheless, the fear is that the Sunni states will join the nuclear-arms race.

In pursuit of its hegemonic ambitions, Iran has armed and financed Hezbollah, effectively taking Lebanon hostage. It has propped up Bashar Assad in Syria and turned the government of Haider al-Abadi in Baghdad into an Iranian puppet. In the chaos that is Yemen, Iran’s allies, the Houthis, have taken the capital city of Sanaa. In Gaza, Iran still supports Hamas and destabilizes Afghanistan.

Iran is the world’s most dangerous regime operating in the world’s most volatile region. The potential for it to possess weapons of mass destruction represents a clear and present danger to the region and the world — and an existential threat to Israel. Iran would have free rein to amass its forces and terrorist proxies all along Israel’s borders, unimpeded, paving the way for Israel’s destruction. Not only would a nuclear bomb give Iran immunity to carry out terror abroad: It would serve as an important tool to thwart the rise of democracy from within, allowing it to repress and abuse its own people without fear of foreign interference.

A negotiated agreement, aided by targeted sanctions and backed by the threat of military force, remains the best way to peacefully prevent Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon. If Iran wants to be recognized as a regional stabilizer, and if it hopes to end its diplomatic isolation and economic sanctions, it must verifiably end its illegal nuclear program and fundamentally disavow terror.

National Post

Mike Fegelman is Executive Director of HonestReporting Canada, a non-profit organization which ensures fair and accurate Canadian media coverage of Israel and the Middle East (HonestReporting.ca).

]]>http://news.nationalpost.com/full-comment/mike-fegelman-dont-trust-tehran/feed1stdiran_rouhanis_dealJosh Rogin: An Obama deal with Iran could die with his days in officehttp://news.nationalpost.com/full-comment/josh-rogin-an-obama-deal-with-iran-could-die-with-his-days-in-office
http://news.nationalpost.com/full-comment/josh-rogin-an-obama-deal-with-iran-could-die-with-his-days-in-office#commentsSat, 28 Feb 2015 13:36:17 +0000http://news.nationalpost.com/?p=708575

With the White House reportedly trying to negotiate a 10- or 15-year deal on Iran’s nuclear program, Republican leaders in Congress are threatening to unravel the agreement much sooner — during President Barack Obama’s final months or soon after he leaves office.

According to several news reports based on leaks from inside the negotiations, the pact being offered to Iran eases restrictions on its nuclear program and relaxes sanctions on its economy in several phases over at least a decade. Since Obama does not intend to seek the Republican Congress’s approval for any deal, fearing it would be rejected, he would instead use executive actions, national security waivers and his powers to suspend any sanctions that Congress won’t repeal.

While Obama could possibly run out the clock until 2017 in this way, the next president may not be able or willing to use these tools. And if that next president is a Republican, he or she likely will have run a presidential campaign based on opposing the deal.

This puts the White House negotiators in a bind: Unless the administration can make a convincing case that any deal Obama offers can survive well past his time in office, the regime of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei is unlikely to buy into the phased approach being offered by the so-called P5+1 countries.

“The supreme leader has said publicly that he is concerned that if he enters into an agreement that the very next president is going to change that agreement,” Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Bob Corker told Bloomberg reporters at a breakfast on Thursday.

How, then, can the White House possibly persuade Tehran that this deal can outlast his presidency? Corker said he thinks the administration will likely make the case that by the time Obama is gone, the momentum of the deal will have set in and the international sanctions regime will have crumbled beyond repair, tying the next administration’s hands.

“They believe everything falls apart at that time. I think that’s what they are selling to the Iranians,” said Corker, who is working on a bill with Sen. Lindsey Graham to mandate a Congressional vote on any nuclear deal with Iran.

While it’s unclear whether the Iranians will buy that argument, Corker certainly doesn’t: “If they went through this process where they actually brought it to Congress and Congress passed muster on it, it really would be a much more settled issue.”

Most Republican congressional leaders, and some Democrats, agree that Obama is making a mistake by avoiding Congressional participation. John McCain, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, told me the administration is leaving itself and its successor open to several actions by trying to skirt Congressional oversight.

“I don’t think the next president is bound by it if it is only an agreement and not a formal treaty,” McCain said of any nuclear pact. “To allege that this doesn’t have all of the marks of a treaty is an insult to everybody’s intelligence.”

Graham told me that he preferred working to push the administration to negotiate a better pact now as opposed to working to change it after it is signed. “To begin a bad deal is a nightmare. Once you set the process in motion it’s very hard to change it,” Graham said. “I don’t like the idea of managing a bad deal, I want to stop it. And I have no desire to stop a deal that achieves the objectives.”

Other congressional Republicans, however, have little interest in cooperating with the White House, even to the point of telegraphing to Iran their hopes to scuttle any pact sooner or later.

“If the deal is not submitted to Congress, I and many others will make clear that Barack Obama will be in office for 23 months and I will be in office for 6 years. And the Iranians should take that into their calculation as they negotiate with Barack Obama’s team,” one Republican lawmaker told a group of reporters Wednesday in a roundtable discussion held on a background basis.

Experts who support the White House’s Iran negotiations say such threats are largely bluster, and that if the Obama administration is able to reach a deal with Iran now, it will be very hard for the next president to stand against it.

“If you are planning something two years down the road, you can do all the planning you want, but it means very little because who knows what the situation will be then,” said John Isaacs, executive director of the Council for a Livable World.

After all, said Isaacs, the next president wouldn’t just be derailing a U.S.-Iran agreement, but undoing the work of seven countries, including close U.S. allies such as Britain and Germany. If a deal is working at least reasonably well until 2017, and the Iranians are mostly complying, efforts to change or repeal it would risk putting the U.S. and Iran back on a path to war — or at least that is the argument the pact’s supporters will make.

Mark Dubowitz, the executive director of the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies and a skeptic of the nuclear negotiations, said he thinks Congress probably won’t even wait for the next administration to try to thwart any Iran deal.

“The Obama administration is badly miscalculating in believing that it can unilaterally provide durable sanctions relief without congressional buy-in,” he said. “There are many ways that a creative Congress can make it difficult to implement a bad agreement on which they were sidelined.”

Along these lines, some Republican House leaders, including Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Ed Royce, are working on a new Iran-related bill crafted to thwart Obama’s implementation of any deal this year and next, according to Dubowitz. Among other things, the legislation would take away the executive branch’s national security waiver authority, remove the Treasury Department’s flexibility to issue licenses for companies to do business with Iran, and make it harder to undo sanctions designations now on Iranian banks.

The Senate, meanwhile, is working on a new sanctions bill crafted by Republican Mark Kirk and Democrat Robert Menendez. The legislation would automatically impose new punishments on Iran if no deal is reached by this summer’s deadline or if Iran is seen as not living up to its end of the bargain. The Senate is waiting to act on the Kirk-Menendez bill until after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu addresses Congress next week, Corker said.

So this is where things stand now: Republican leaders such as Corker want to assert Congress’s role in foreign policy while also working constructively with the administration; other Republicans simply want to kill the deal; most of the Republican presidential aspirants are certain to criticize the administration’s approach; and presumptive Democratic frontrunner Hillary Clinton is likely to cautiously back any Iran deal but not claim ownership in case it smells bad by the time the election comes about.

As if getting Iran to agree on a nuclear deal wasn’t a big enough hurdle for the administration, it now seems certain that locking in a pact will simply mark the start of another battle with Congress. Obama can probably keep Republican efforts against him in check while he is still president, but after that, all bets are off.

http://news.nationalpost.com/full-comment/josh-rogin-an-obama-deal-with-iran-could-die-with-his-days-in-office/feed2stdBarack-ObamaPolitical stakes are high for Iranian president Hassan Rouhani as nuclear talks enter the final stageshttp://news.nationalpost.com/news/iran-nuclear-talks-political-stakes-for-president-rouhani
http://news.nationalpost.com/news/iran-nuclear-talks-political-stakes-for-president-rouhani#commentsSat, 14 Feb 2015 14:16:49 +0000http://news.nationalpost.com/?p=699883

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — Throughout the long negotiations over the fate of Iran’s nuclear program, President Hassan Rouhani has withstood scathing criticism from hard-liners at home by sticking to his case that a deal with his country’s longtime enemies will bring peace and prosperity.

So the political stakes are high for the moderate president as talks enter their homestretch toward a June deadline.

If he succeeds in sealing an agreement, Iran could see much-hoped-for relief from withering sanctions that are dragging down the economy at a time when the OPEC producer is trying to ride out a severe slump in oil prices.

An improvement in the economy could translate into a broader boost in domestic support for Rouhani and strengthen the moderate camp gain in parliamentary elections next year. Moderates are pushing for a less confrontational relationship with the West — a break from the eight-year tenure of predecessor Mahmoud Ahmadinejad — and seek more freedoms at home, including greater freedom of expression and easing of social restrictions.

Failure, however, only will bolster his hard-line opponents who are against that entire agenda.

“Rouhani was elected on, promoted and supported the idea that he would help the Iranian economy recover. And of course the nuclear agreement is tied to that because of the sanctions,” said Dubai-based political analyst Theodore Karasik. “If there is no nuclear deal, the presidency will go back to a more ultraconservative leader — under a nuclear Iran.”

The U.S. and other world powers reached an interim deal with Iran in November 2013 that involved some sanctions relief in exchange for Tehran freezing its nuclear program. Talks have now been extended until the end of June, though negotiators aim to reach a framework for a deal by the end of next month.

Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif sounded a hopeful tone earlier this week, saying a further extension of the talks wouldn’t be in anyone’s interest. President Barack Obama seems to agree, saying Monday that “we’re at a point where they need to make a decision.”

Zarif has borne the brunt of the hard-liners’ most recent criticism, particularly over a walk he took with U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry during negotiations in Geneva last month.

Comments by Mohammad Reza Naghdi, the head of the Basij organization, the paramilitary wing of the powerful Revolutionary Guards, were typical of the outrage. He blasted the envoy for “showing intimacy with the enemy of humanity” and “trampling on the blood of martyrs.”

Rouhani’s team can afford to weather the criticism for now. They still have the crucial backing of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who has the final say on all major decisions in the Islamic Republic.

Without Khamenei’s consent, the negotiating team couldn’t survive more than 10 minutes

“Without Khamenei’s consent, the negotiating team couldn’t survive more than 10 minutes,” said Tehran-based political analyst Saeed Leilaz.

Leilaz said many in the hard-line establishment are still struggling to accept what he called the “changing the tone of conversation” by Iran’s leadership in its dealings with Washington. “It was a very severe and sudden change,” he said.

Khamenei this week reiterated support for the negotiators, telling members of the air force in a speech that they are doing their best to “take away the option of sanctions from the enemy.”

He chose his words carefully though.

“We think that no deal is better than a bad deal that is against our national interests,” he said, adding pointedly that his country is not “desperate” on the nuclear issue.

Khamenei has kept his stance vague from the start. When talks began, he said he would not oppose them but did not expect success. Last month, he said the U.S. can’t be trusted to lift sanctions and that Iran must develop an “economy of resistance.”

“He basically wants credit if there is a deal, and doesn’t want to be blamed if it doesn’t work,” said Michael Singh, managing director at The Washington Institute.

In an address Wednesday before thousands gathered in Tehran’s Azadi Square to mark the 36th anniversary of the Islamic Revolution, Rouhani sought to minimize the role that sanctions played in driving the nuclear negotiations forward.

He said Iran instead came to the table “for the sake of logic and for creating peace and stability in the region and world.”

Haleh Esfandiari, who directs the Middle East program at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, said many Iranians will be disappointed if negotiators fail to reach a lasting deal.

“No deal means ratcheting up sanctions, more hardship,” she said. “If there is no deal, it means Rouhani has lost and has lost big.”

Leilaz, the Tehran analyst, agreed that Rouhani’s political fortunes are ties to a deal.

“If Rouhani wants to win more seats in next parliamentary election … then he really needs the deal,” he said.

A lasting agreement would go a long way in improving Iran’s relations with the United States, which along with Israel ranks as the hard-liners’ top foe. But other points of contention remain.

Iran has detained Iranian-American Washington Post correspondent Jason Rezaian since July and he is expected to be tried soon before Iran’s Revolutionary Court. The charges have not been publicly announced, but the court mostly hears cases involving security offenses.

A judge known for his tough sentencing, Abolghassem Salavati, has been assigned to hear the case, according to Rezaian’s family. They called the selection “very disturbing” given European Union sanctions against the jurist, who has presided over several politically charged cases, including those of protesters arrested in connection with demonstrations that followed the 2009 presidential elections.

Key opposition leaders in those contentious elections, Mir Hossein Mousavi and Mahdi Karroubi, remain under house arrest — a reminder of the limits the establishment is willing to tolerate.

Analysts outside Iran say the journalist’s detention could be the work of hard-liners who want to send a message.

“They’re trying to undermine Rouhani,” and tell him “while you’re negotiating, we can do whatever we want,” said Esfandiari, who was herself detained by Iranian security authorities in 2007.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu pushed the world for years to limit Iran’s nuclear program. After rejecting a deal designed to do just that, he finds himself the odd man out with his own options, including military action, limited.

Government officials and analysts said Israel may now try to influence the shape of any final accord, and won’t seek to hit Iranian facilities. Iran has accused Israel of killing scientists in its nuclear and missile programs, and covert operations may be more likely than an attack, analysts said.

Israel’s rejection of the accord reached in Geneva by Iran and six leading nations over the weekend was swift. The agreement is a “historic mistake” that leaves the world “a much more dangerous place, because the most dangerous regime in the world has taken a significant step toward attaining the most dangerous weapon,” Netanyahu said.

The first accord since the Iranian nuclear program came under international scrutiny in 2003 eases sanctions on Iran in return for concessions on its atomic work. Its six-month timetable is meant to give negotiators time to seek a comprehensive deal to halt Iranian nuclear work that they, like Israel, think is a cover to build weapons.

“We have to get ready for the real battle, which is how the final agreement will look,” Deputy Foreign Minister Zeev Elkin said in an interview with Israel Radio. The challenge will be “to see where the red lines are.”

Justice Minister Tzipi Livni, who also oversees peace negotiations with the Palestinians, said in an interview with Army Radio that Israel should look “to forge a diplomatic front with other countries, including Arab states that see Iran as a nuclear threat.”

Netanyahu has criticized the U.S.-led effort to reach an agreement with Iran, unlike Gulf states that have expressed their reservations more quietly. Some in Israel — and even within the coalition itself — questioned their government’s tactics.

“We must regain the world’s ear and restore our intimate relationship with the U.S.,” Finance Minister Yair Lapid said in an e-mailed statement.

Former Israeli defence minister and military chief Shaul Mofaz, now part of the parliamentary opposition to Netanyahu’s ruling coalition, said Israeli scolding wasn’t effective because it didn’t block the deal.

“What Israel has to do is change its strategy over the next six months,” the Tehran-born Mofaz told Israel Radio,“to sit with the Americans in quiet diplomacy rather than rebuke them, and come to agreement with the U.S. on real red-lines.”

AP Photo / Carolyn KasterU.S. Secretary of State John Kerry walks across the tarmac as he arrives at London's Stansted Airport, Sunday, Nov. 24, 2013. Kerry is in London to meet with Libyan's Prime Minister Ali Zidan and British Foreign Secretary William Hague.

President Barack Obama called Netanyahu Sunday before departing on a trip to the U.S. West Coast and the two talked for about a half-hour. At an Israeli cabinet meeting earlier in the day, the Israeli leader called the six- month accord with Iran “an historic mistake.”

“The president underscored that the United States will remain firm in our commitment to Israel, which has good reason to be skeptical about Iran’s intentions,” Josh Earnest, a White House spokesman, told reporters traveling with Obama. The president didn’t address Iran in his public remarks at a fundraiser last night in Seattle.

Some Democratic lawmakers with significant Jewish constituencies joined in the criticism, including Charles Schumer of New York, who said he was “disappointed” by a deal that “does not seem proportional.”

Schumer, the Senate’s third-ranking Democrat, said in a statement Sunday that it’s now “more likely” that Democratic lawmakers will join Republicans in passing legislation to impose more sanctions on Iran, a step that Obama warned in announcing the deal might either disrupt the agreement or distance the U.S. from allies needed to maintain remaining sanctions.

Netanyahu said yesterday Israel is “not bound” by the Geneva agreement and his nation “has the right and obligation to defend itself, by itself, against any threat.” The military option still exists, Elkin told Israel Radio.

The use of force isn’t seen as likely within the life of the deal, said Uzi Eilam, former director-general of the Israeli Atomic Energy Commission.

“This agreement will not allow Israel, or anyone, to utilize the military option over the six next months, or at least until the interim period is over and we know if a final deal is possible,” said Eilam, now a research fellow at the Institute for National Security Studies at Tel Aviv University.

“What Israel can do during this period is push the international community toward making the final deal as tough as it can, though it should do so far more quietly than it has in the past,” said Eilam, a retired brigadier-general.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry told CBS News in Geneva that the agreement doesn’t take the threat of force off the table and rejected Israel’s position, articulated yesterday by Defence Minister Moshe Ya’alon, that the U.S. capitulated to Iranian deceit.

The agreement is “not based on trust. It’s based on verification,” with mechanisms in place to confirm whether Iran is in compliance, he said.

He told CNN television’s “State of the Union” news show that the agreement makes Israel safer because the Iranian nuclear program “is actually set backwards and is actually locked into place in critical places.”

Israeli markets saw a reduced risk of an Israeli use of force, with the benchmark TA-25 Index closing Sunday up by 0.6 percent to 1,352.96, the highest level on record. The index was little changed at 1,354.47 at 2:56 p.m. Monday.

“The big fear of foreign investors was that there would be a regional flameup, and the Iran deal takes that out of the equation,” Hadar Oshrat, head of Israel equity sales and trading at Deutsche Bank AG in Tel Aviv, said in an interview. “The deal eliminates the geopolitical threat of a regional conflict, which will make it easier for foreign investors to focus on economic fundamentals and see Israel as an investment alternative.”

Israel wanted world powers to oblige Iran to stop enriching uranium and dismantle an unfinished heavy water reactor at Arak that could eventually produce plutonium. The Geneva agreement limits uranium enrichment under close monitoring and halts any further development at Arak.

The search, now 30 years old, for Iranian “moderates” goes on. Amid the enthusiasm of the latest sighting, it’s worth remembering that the highlight of the Iran-contra arms-for-hostages debacle was the secret trip to Tehran taken by Robert McFarlane, President Reagan’s former national security adviser. He brought a key-shaped cake symbolizing the new relations he was opening with the “moderates.”

We know how that ended.

Three decades later, the mirage reappears in the form of Hassan Rowhani. Strange resume for a moderate: 35 years of unswervingly loyal service to the Islamic Republic as a close aide to Ayatollahs Khomeini and Khamenei. Moreover, Rowhani was one of only six presidential candidates, another 678 having been disqualified by the regime as ideologically unsound. That puts him in the 99th centile for fealty.

Rowhani is Khamenei’s agent but, with a smile and style, he’s now hailed as the face of Iranian moderation. Why? Because Rowhani wants better relations with the West.

Well, what leader would not want relief from Western sanctions that have sunk Iran’s economy, devalued its currency and caused widespread hardship? The test of moderation is not what you want but what you’re willing to give. After all, sanctions were not slapped on Iran for amusement. It was to enforce multiple Security Council resolutions demanding a halt to uranium enrichment.

Yet in his lovey-dovey Washington Post op-ed, his U.N. speech and various interviews, Rowhani gives not an inch on uranium enrichment. Indeed, he has repeatedly denied that Iran is pursuing nuclear weapons at all. Or ever has. Such a transparent falsehood — what country swimming in oil would sacrifice its economy just to produce nuclear electricity that advanced countries like Germany are already abandoning? — is hardly the basis for a successful negotiation.

But successful negotiation is not what the mullahs are seeking. They want sanctions relief. And more than anything, they want to buy time.

It takes about 250 kilograms of 20 percent enriched uranium to make a nuclear bomb. The International Atomic Energy Agency reported in August that Iran already has 186 kilograms. That leaves the Iranians on the threshold of going nuclear. They are adding 3,000 new high-speed centrifuges. They need just a bit more talking, stalling, smiling and stringing along a gullible West.
Rowhani is the man to do exactly that. As Iran’s chief nuclear negotiator between 2003 and 2005, he boasted in a 2004 speech to the Supreme Cultural Revolution Council, “While we were talking with the Europeans in Tehran, we were installing equipment in parts of the [uranium conversion] facility in Isfahan. … In fact, by creating a calm environment, we were able to complete the work in Isfahan.”

Such is their contempt for us that they don’t even hide their strategy: Spin the centrifuges while spinning the West.

And when the president of the world’s sole superpower asks for a photo-op handshake with the president of a regime that, in President Obama’s own words, kills and kidnaps and terrorizes Americans, the killer-kidnapper does not even deign to accept the homage. Rowhani rebuffed him.

Who can blame Rowhani? Offer a few pleasant words in an op-ed hailing a new era of non-zero-sum foreign relations, and watch the media and the administration immediately swoon with visions of detente.

But at least we have to talk, say the enthusiasts. As if we haven’t been talking. For a decade. Strung along in negotiations of every manner — the EU3, the P5+1, then the final, very final, last-chance 2012 negotiations held in Istanbul, Baghdad and Moscow at which the Iranians refused to even consider the nuclear issue, declaring the dossier closed. Plus two more useless rounds this year.
I’m for negotiations. But only if it’s to do something real, not to run out the clock as Iran goes nuclear. The administration says it wants actions not words. Fine. Demand one simple proof of good faith: Honor the UN resolutions. Suspend uranium enrichment and we will talk.

At least that stops the clock. Anything else amounts to being played.

And about the Khamenei agent who charms but declares enrichment an inalienable right, who smiles but refuses to shake the president’s hand. When asked by NBC News whether the Holocaust was a myth, Rowhani replied: “I’m not a historian. I’m a politician.”

Iranian moderation in action.

And, by the way, do you know who was one of the three Iranian “moderates” the cake-bearing McFarlane dealt with at that fateful arms-for-hostage meeting in Tehran 27 years ago? Hassan Rowhani.
We never learn.

WASHINGTON — The growing availability of news media and cellphones in reclusive North Korea likely forced it to admit within hours that its long-range rocket launch last month was a failure, the U.S. human rights envoy to the country said Thursday.

The envoy, Robert King, was speaking at the launch of a U.S. government-funded study that says North Koreans now have unprecedented access to foreign media, giving them a more positive impression of the outside world.

North Korea allowed foreign journalists unprecedented access to the country to report on centennial of the nation’s founder in mid-April, which included the launch of a satellite into space that violated U.N. sanctions. The rocket, which uses the same technology to ballistic missiles, disintegrated within a minute or two of take-off.

“The media environment in North Korea has changed and is changing, and with the availability of cellphones for internal communication, and greater availability of information internally, you can’t just say, ’Let’s play patriotic songs’ so all can tune in,” King said.

The study, commissioned by the State Department and conducted by a consulting group, InterMedia, says North Korea still has the world’s most closed media environment — there’s still no public access to the Internet — but the government’s ability to control the flow information is receding.

Restrictions that threaten years in prison and hard labour for activities like watching a South Korean soap opera or listening to foreign news broadcasts have been tightened since the mid-2000s, but are enforced less than in the past, the study says. People remain wary of government inspection teams, but fewer citizens appear to be reporting on each other.

“The state can’t count on their citizenry to turn each other in,” the main author, Nathaniel Kretchun, said.

The study, titled “A Quiet Opening: North Koreans in a Changing Media Environment,” is based on research involving several hundred North Korean defectors and refugees during 2010-11.

It found that nearly half had watched a foreign DVD, the most commonly used type of outside media. About a quarter of people had listened to a foreign radio news broadcast while in North Korea or watched a foreign news station.

Nearly one-third of television watchers whose sets were fixed to state-run programing had modified them in order to capture a signal from outside stations detectable along the Chinese and South Korean borders.

North Korea is separated from the more prosperous South Korea by a heavily militarized frontier, and access to the country remains strictly controlled. The communist government’s monopoly on information began to erode in the late 1990s when famine led to less reliance and trust in the state, Kretchun said.

Nowadays, North Koreans with exposure to outside news or entertainment media are more likely to be favourably disposed toward South Korea and the United States — the North’s traditional enemies — although they would be extremely limited in their ability to express such views or act on them, the study says.

“Ultimately, North Korea is losing control of the what its people are seeing and listening to and how people are thinking about their socio-economic conditions and the outside world,” said Abraham Kim of the Korea Economic Institute.

However the study says those changing perceptions are unlikely to translate into significant pressure on the North Korean government in the short term. Also, Kretchun cautioned that the research, based on accounts from refugees and defectors, is not necessarily representative of those still living in the country.

Access to technology has picked up rapidly in recent years, fueled by cheap imports from China. Some 74 per cent of those interviewed had access to a TV when they lived in North Korea, and 46 per cent had access to a DVD player. Computers, portable USB drives and illegal Chinese mobile phones that can make international calls — unlike local cellphones — also have begun entering the country in substantial numbers, especially among the elite.

Martyn Williams, who writes the blog NorthKoreaTech.org, said that the government’s intense use of its scant resources and electricity to jam foreign news broadcasts reflected its concern about the impact of outside media.

North Korea targets between 10 and 15 frequencies used by international short-wave broadcasters, such as U.S.-funded Radio Free Asia and stations operated by South Korea’s government, for up to 18 hours a day, and on major occasions like the April centennial, it jams radio signals around the clock, Williams said.

The North appears to have recently installed more sophisticated transmitters acquired from a Chinese company, although jamming operations have been up and down this year, likely because of technical problems or power shortages, he said.

VIENNA — Talks on ridding the Middle East of nuclear weapons looked in doubt on Tuesday as the Western official organising them said he had yet to secure the needed attendance of all countries in the region.

The statement by Finnish diplomat Jaakko Laajava at a meeting in Vienna was a sign of the difficulties involved in getting Israel, its arch foe Iran and other Middle East nations to sit around a table this year to discuss the divisive issue.

Laajava, whose appointment was announced by the United Nations last October, did not say which countries were still leaving their attendance unclear, but both Iran and Israel are believed to be among them.

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Underlining the deep divisions on the issue of weapons of mass destruction, Iran and Arab states used the Vienna meeting on the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) to repeat their criticism of Israel over its assumed atomic arsenal.

Egypt, which originally proposed talks on creating a nuclear arms-free Middle East, said such a conference would represent a crossroads for Arab states and warned that “its failure would invite them to revise” their nuclear policies.

AFP PHOTO/GALI TIBBONIsraeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu during a press conference marking the start of his fourth year in power on Tuesday in Jerusalem. "The Iranian government ... is having economic troubles but it has yet to move backward, even a millimeter, in its nuclear program," Netanyahu said Tuesday.

It did not elaborate, but the wording may be interpreted as a veiled warning regarding Arab states’ commitment to the NPT, a pact designed to prevent the spread of atomic arms.

Israel is not a member of the voluntary 1970 pact so was not represented in Vienna but the United States warned that “continued efforts to single out Israel … will make a (Middle East) conference increasingly less likely”.

Egypt’s plan for an international meeting in 2012 to lay the groundwork for the possible creation of a Middle East free of weapons of mass destruction was agreed at an NPT review conference two years ago.

“ACHIEVABLE” GOAL

In his first public briefing on the issue since he took up the job, Laajava told delegates in Vienna he had held a series of meetings with regional states and they shared the goal of establishing such a zone, but they differed on how to do so.

“Unfortunately, while much has de facto been already achieved in these consultations in terms of identifying common ground, I cannot yet report that the conference will be attended by all states of the region,” he said.

Laajava said Finland was prepared to host the meeting any time during 2012, suggesting December was a possibility.

Iran and Arab states see Israel’s assumed atomic arsenal as a major threat to peace and stability in the Middle East.

HO/AFP/Getty ImagesIranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad delivering a speech to the Iran's Atomic Energy Organization scientists during a ceremony to mark National Nuclear Day in Tehran on April 8, 2012.

Israel — widely believed to be the only regional state with such arms and the only one outside the NPT — and the United States regard Iran as the region’s main proliferation threat, accusing Tehran of seeking to develop such weapons.

The Jewish state has said it would sign the NPT and renounce nuclear weapons only as part of a broader Middle East peace deal with Arab states and Iran that guaranteed its security.

Israel does not rule out taking part in the planned conference, Foreign Ministry spokesman Yigal Palmor said last week, but added it was “awaiting clarification on some issues”.

Thomas Countryman, U.S. assistant secretary for international security and non-proliferation, told the meeting in Vienna that a Middle East free of weapons of mass destruction was an achievable, but long-term, goal.

However “a comprehensive and durable peace and full compliance by all countries in the region with their non-proliferation obligations” was needed for this to happen, he said.

Mark Fitzpatrick, a director of the International Institute for Strategic Studies think-tank, said the rationale for creating a zone in the Middle East free of nuclear weapons and other weapons of mass destruction was stronger than ever.

It could “be an answer to the Iranian nuclear crisis that threatens to spark regional proliferation and engulf the Middle East in another war” and “remove the sense of double standards over Israel’s nuclear programme”, Fitzpatrick said in a report.

The Associated Press

]]>http://news.nationalpost.com/news/unless-iran-and-israel-sit-and-talk-with-each-other-middle-east-nuclear-talks-unworkable-diplomat/feed4stdThe facilitator for the Middle East Weapons of Mass Destruction Free Zone Conference Jaako Laajava from Finland speaks at the Preparatory Committee for the 2015 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty Review Conference in Vienna, Austria, on Tuesday, May 8, 2012Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu during a press conference marking the start of his fourth year in power on Tuesday in Jerusalem. "The Iranian government ... is having economic troubles but it has yet to move backward, even a millimeter, in its nuclear program," Netanyahu said Tuesday.Iran NuclearPakistan tests nuclear-capable ballistic missilehttp://news.nationalpost.com/news/pakistan-tests-nuclear-capable-ballistic-missile
http://news.nationalpost.com/news/pakistan-tests-nuclear-capable-ballistic-missile#commentsWed, 25 Apr 2012 20:51:23 +0000http://news.nationalpost.com/?p=166077

ISLAMABAD — Pakistan successfully test-fired a nuclear-capable intermediate-range ballistic missile on Wednesday, the military said, less than a week after India tried out a long-range missile.

The exact range of Pakistan’s missile was not revealed, but retired General Talat Masood, a defence analyst, told AFP intermediate-range ballistic missiles could reach targets up to 2,500-3,000 kilometres (1,550-1,850 miles) away — which would put almost all of arch-rival India within reach.

On Thursday last week India test-fired its long-range Agni V missile, which can deliver a one-tonne nuclear warhead, bringing anywhere in China into range.

“Pakistan today successfully conducted the launch of the intermediate-range ballistic missile Hatf IV Shaheen-1A weapon system,” Pakistan’s military said in a statement.

India and Pakistan — which have fought three wars since independence from Britain in 1947 — have routinely carried out missile tests since both demonstrated nuclear weapons capability in 1998.

Pakistan’s most recent missile test came last month with the launch of the short-range nuclear-capable Abdali, while in April 2008 it tested the Shaheen II, or Hatf VI, missile with a range of 2,000 kilometres.

HO/AFP/Getty Imagesge and technical parameters, the military said, and can carry nuclear and conventional warheads.Pakistan successfully test fired a nuclear-capable intermediate range ballistic missile on April 25, the military said, less than a week after India test launched a long range missile.

Wednesday’s missile, which landed in the sea, was a version of the Shaheen-1 with improvements in ran

“This is part of Pakistan’s programme to develop nuclear and missile deterrence. It has a series of missiles in its inventory. This is perhaps the longest-range missile in its programme,” retired general Masood told AFP.

“The whole object is essentially India-centric while India’s own programme is directed towards China. Pakistan is engaged in improving its missile system as India continues to increase its capability.”

Director General Strategic Plans Division Lieutenant General Khalid Ahmed Kidwai congratulated scientists and engineers on the successful launch, and the accuracy of the missile in reaching the target.

He said it would further consolidate and strengthen Pakistan’s deterrence abilities.

Pakistan’s arsenal includes short-, medium- and long-range missiles named after Muslim conquerors.

India’s missile test last week brought a muted international response, with China downplaying its significance, insisting the countries were partners not rivals, and Washington calling for “restraint” among nuclear powers.

This was in sharp contrast to the widespread fury and condemnation that greeted North Korea’s unsuccessful test launch of a long-range rocket on April 13.

The United States, Pakistan’s uneasy ally, later Wednesday again called for restraint.

“What’s most important is that they do seem to have taken steps to inform the Indians, and we, as you know, are quite intent on those two countries continuing to work together and improve their dialogue,” said US State Departm

ent spokeswoman Victoria Nuland.

India and Pakistan were on the brink of war in 2002 over the disputed territory of Kashmir, but a slow-moving peace dialogue resumed last March after a three-year suspension following the November 2008 Mumbai attacks.

India and the United States blamed the attacks on Pakistani militant group Lashkar-e-Taiba and Islamabad later admitted that the assault was at least partly planned in Pakistan.

A study published on Tuesday claimed that more than a billion people worldwide could starve if India and Pakistan unleash nuclear weapons as even a limited nuclear war would cause major climate disruptions.

]]>http://news.nationalpost.com/news/pakistan-tests-nuclear-capable-ballistic-missile/feed10stdLocals hang on the back of a van as they head to their town on the outskirts of Abbottabad510494455U.S. looking at ‘all options’ to discourage North Korea as nuclear test loomshttp://news.nationalpost.com/news/u-s-looking-at-all-options-on-north-korea-as-nuclear-test-looms
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CLICK TO ENLARGEGraphic: North Korea’s Unha-3 rocket

SEOUL — The United States is looking at “all options” as it seeks to discourage North Korea from conducting a third nuclear test, a senior U.S. military officer said on Tuesday, days after a failed long-range rocket launch by the North that drew international condemnation.

The UN Security Council on Monday condemned reclusive North Korea for Friday’s rocket launch and warned of further action if Pyongyang carries out a nuclear test, reflecting concern that it may follow a pattern it set in 2009 during its second nuclear test.

Commander of U.S. Pacific Command Admiral Samuel Locklear said Washington had a range of options to consider in response to any further provocation by the North.

“I don’t think it would be appropriate to comment on how we would pursue any future military operation, but I can tell you that with the alliance, that we are continually looking at all options,” he said when asked whether a surgical strike on the North’s nuclear test site was being considered.

The comments came as doubts were raised about the fate of a planned visit by international inspectors to the North’s nuclear site after Pyongyang and Washington agreed in February to a moratorium on missile and nuclear tests in return for food aid.

That agreement fell apart when Pyongyang announced it would launch a long-range rocket to put a satellite into orbit, claiming its right to conduct space research. The West believed the launch was merely a ballistic missile test.

North Korea has revealed work on a uranium enrichment program, which arms experts said could give it a second path to building nuclear weapons after its plutonium-based program at Yongbyon nuclear complex was suspended under a 2005 international disarmament deal.

U.S. and South Korean officials have said former U.S. President Bill Clinton considered the possibility of a surgical strike on Yongbyon at the height of a nuclear crisis in 1994 before Pyongyang struck an energy deal with Washington to suspend nuclear activities.

NEW DELHI — India hopes this week to join a select group of countries with intercontinental missiles by holding the first test flight of a new long-range nuclear-capable rocket, officials said Monday.

The Defense Research and Development Organization (DRDO) said it plans the maiden launch of the Agni-V missile, which has a range of more than 5,000 kilometres between Wednesday and Friday.

The exact launch date has not yet been set “because this is our longest-range missile and there are many logistics issues and hence we don’t plan for one (particular) day,” DRDO spokesman Ravi Gupta told AFP.

In the latest display of India’s growing military might, the test of the indigenously developed Agni-V will be carried out from a coastal range in the eastern state of Orissa.

“Agni-V is a 5,000-plus kilometre range missile and it is to meet our present-day threat perceptions, which are determined by our defense forces and other agencies,” Gupta said from the test site.

The Agni-V would in theory be able to strike targets across Asia and some parts of Europe. Only China, Russia, France, the United States, Great Britain and Israel are thought to have such long-distance missiles.

The weapons system was not developed to threaten any particular country, said DRDO spokesman Gupta.

“This is a deterrent to avoid wars and it is not country-specific,” he said. “Besides, India has a no-first-use policy,” he said, calling the country’s missile development program “purely defensive.”

The planned test flight comes after India launched last November the Agni-IV missile that can travel 3,500 kilometres and is capable of carrying a one-tonne nuclear warhead deep inside China.

India is among the world’s top 10 military spenders, with Jane’s Defense Weekly forecasting its total purchases between 2011 and 2015 will top $100 billion.

India has fought three wars with arch-rival Pakistan since independence in 1947, but China is now viewed as the main focus of India’s military concerns.

The border between India and China has been the subject of inconclusive diplomatic talks since the 1980s after the two nations fought a brief, bloody war in 1962.

Indian military analyst Afsir Karim said since the country already has potential to strike China with the Agni-IV, the utility of the latest missile was unclear.

“I do not see any strategic value in developing this system except for upgrading India’s military prestige,” Karim, a retired army lieutenant-general, told AFP.

India staged a string of atomic detonations in 1998 and declared itself a nuclear-weapons state but it refuses to sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

The country’s test plan has not attracted the international criticism aimed at reclusive North Korea, which last week carried out a rocket test that ended in failure.

Switzerland has charged a father and two sons with involvement in the smuggling ring of Abdul Qadeer Khan, the father of Pakistan’s atom bomb who sold nuclear secrets to North Korea, Iran and Libya, prosecutors said Tuesday.

The three Swiss men were engineers who worked with centrifuges – used to enrich nuclear material – and became friends with Khan, media reported.

The office of Switzerland’s attorney general (OAG) said the men had admitted to offences including forgery and money laundering in the hope of a reduced sentence.

Related

“From the outset, the OAG’s enquiries indicated that the accused had links with the network of Abdul Qadeer Khan, the ‘father of the Pakistani atom bomb,’ who supplied Libya with nuclear weapons technology,” prosecutors said.

The Khan network trafficked nuclear material, equipment and know-how to Iran, Libya and North Korea for some two decades before Khan was arrested in 2004.

Swiss authorities started investigating Marco Tinner and his brother Urs the same year, confiscating thousands of documents. A year later they expanded investigations to include their father, Friedrich.

Switzerland, which is not a nuclear power, is not authorized under the global Non-Proliferation Treaty to possess documents related to nuclear weaponry.

In 2009, Urs Tinner said that he had actually helped the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency to uncover Libya’s nuclear weapons program by tipping it off that Libya was about to get the equipment needed to make an atom bomb, Swiss media reported.

OTTAWA — In recent weeks, the federal government has been using a groundbreaking International Atomic Energy Agency report that says Iran is trying to build a nuclear arsenal as justification for imposing tougher sanctions against the Islamic republic.

But leaked diplomatic cables show frustrated U.S. diplomats labelling Canada a “budget hawk” as recently as last year for its steadfast refusal to increase the IAEA’s budget, which the Americans feared would undermine the UN agency’s work on nuclear security.

The cables, released through WikiLeaks, paint a surprisingly divisive picture of the budget negotiations and backroom discussions that were taking place at the nuclear watchdog’s offices in Vienna between June 2009 and February 2010.

Following a major disarmament speech delivered by U.S. President Barack Obama in April 2009, the U.S. identified the IAEA as a major pillar for eliminating nuclear weapons from the world.

As a result, the U.S. was one of the main proponents of increasing the agency’s budget to “demonstrate the singular role of the IAEA in protecting our global security,” according to a cable dated July 9, 2009.

U.S. diplomats, however, would not find an ally in Canada.

Canadian Foreign Affairs officials told U.S. diplomats at the U.S. Embassy in Ottawa in June 2009 that “current Canadian policy called for zero nominal growth in the IAEA budget.”

One Foreign Affairs official added “that there was no ‘appetite for a change’ of policy at the senior levels of the Canadian government,” reads the cable from June 9, 2009.

At a followup meeting summarized in the same cable, a Canadian diplomat told the Americans his colleagues at Foreign Affairs “were unwilling to burn their political capital in what probably would be an unsuccessful effort to get Foreign Minister [Lawrence] Cannon to change Canada’s position.”

“He added that senior U.S. officials would perhaps stand a better chance of convincing Canada to come around on the issue by pressing this position ‘at the senior political level in the G8 context.’”

U.S. diplomats blamed the economic recession and the Conservative government’s refusal to increase the amount of money being given to UN agencies and other international organizations.

Canada was not alone in opposing budget increases for the IAEA, the cables indicate, with France, Germany and several other European “budget hawks” taking a similar position.

As a result, U.S. diplomats were encouraging political leaders in Washington to take the IAEA budget up with counterparts in Canada and across Europe.

It’s unclear whether the issue did reach the political level in relations with Canada, but U.S. diplomats appeared unimpressed with the “conservative tack” taken by Canadian diplomats in an impromptu address to the IAEA in Vienna in December 2009, which reiterated fiscal restraint.

The last cable, dated Feb. 2, 2010, shows U.S. diplomats had achieved some success, with officials writing they had “witnessed some significant softening in the hard-line positions of some of the ‘budget hawks’ [Canada and France] and a much more open UK.”

Canada contributed a little more than $13-million to the IAEA in the last fiscal year, roughly the same as the previous two years.

During the IAEA’s general conference this past September, Canadian Ambassador John Barrett criticized Iran, Syria and North Korea for refusing to co-operate with the nuclear watchdog. He added Canada was committed to the IAEA, before calling for zero growth in its budget this year.

Canada joined the U.S. and the United Kingdom in tightening sanctions against Iran last month after the IAEA published a major report saying the Islamic republic was close to acquiring nuclear weapons.

]]>http://news.nationalpost.com/news/canada/u-s-frustrated-with-canada-over-nuclear-watchdog-funding-leaked-cables-show/feed2stdLeaked cables reveal the U.S.'s frustrations with Canada over the International Atomic Energy Agency, a body the U.S. feels is vital in protecting against nuclear proliferation by countries such as Iran, whose Bushehr nuclear plant is pictured.